


pockets full of stones

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [87]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: C-PTSD, Drowning, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, recovery is a spiral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4496547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky knows just about every single edge, because HYDRA tested it, tested him, to that edge and almost to destruction, over and over, just so they'd know. </p>
<p>And lately Bucky's been dreaming about drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pockets full of stones

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.
> 
> Written for the Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompt abuse.

Slowly, over time, Steve figures out how to turn the rage into fuel. 

Into fuel for every day stuff, that is, not for violence: right now the world doesn't need him to be violent, _Bucky_ doesn't need him to be violent, and Steve doesn't even need it from himself. What he needs is to be calm and patient and consistent and careful, and everything else. Frankly violence would be a lot easier: yet another thing he'd tell his younger self if he had the chance. _Kid, trust me. Give it ten years - from your point of view, anyway - and patience is gonna be a lot more important than how hard you can punch people._

Stubborn can do service for patience, if you figure out how to do it right, learn the right way to act it out. It turns out seething rage can feed everything else if you direct it to the right places and turn it around to fit the right slots. And Steve has enough furious hateful rage to keep a city going, or better yet to burn a city to the ground. 

He just _uses_ it to be okay with making another pot of coffee because there's nothing else to do, or fixing something that got broken, or sitting beside Bucky on the ground with a sketchbook until Bucky can let him help, whatever shape "help" takes. Uses it to grind down fear every time he goes out and leaves Bucky behind, and every time something really screws up again. Uses it to keep his brain working even when he's tired, to tell the _difference_ between the times he needs to walk as carefully as if the floor were mined, and the times it's actually better to act like everything's normal and treat Bucky like anyone else. 

Well. Anyone else who's also Bucky. The point being, _not_ like someone who has to be handled like spun glass. Instead, like someone who can handle a few frustrations, a few wrong steps. 

The trick isn't very sophisticated, and for that matter it's probably not that grown up, either: taunting the dead with _I took him back_ again _you miserable little piece of shit and you lost_ again _and you lost_ because _you took him and you hurt him and I am going to see fixed_ everything _you broke you fucking stunted festering troll_ \- well, it really doesn't strike Steve as particularly mature. 

He doesn't bother thinking _words_ at Pierce's damned (with any luck) soul. Pierce doesn't deserve them. He just did eventually manage to kick his brain into seeing things the way Bucky does and now he privately gloats over the feeling and the knowledge - but if he did articulate it it might go something like, _it was never you, you were_ nothing _you got stupid God-damned_ lucky _you looked like me and you didn't even fucking know, and you got arrogant and you lost and you will keep losing and you could walk in the fucking door alive again today and all it would get you is a more painful death and an uglier corpse, you pathetic putrid counterfeit bastard._

Or maybe it might come out as _you lose_ , because there's something to be said for being succinct. And for hitting the sore spot dead on. 

Either way, Steve puts the emotional age of that whole mental technique at about oh, eleven at the oldest. Probably more like eight. But it works, broadly speaking, and that's the important part. It gives him somewhere to shunt all the heat and hate and the base, almost animal need to _make this not be so_ and punch the whole world until it isn't . . . into something that helps. 

Something he can use to help. 

 

About a month after he'd been stupid and read _The Lord of the Rings_ even though Natasha told him he'd wish he hadn't (and she'd been right), she'd handed him a different trilogy, same genre but newer, if still a couple decades old. She'd said, _This is going to rip your heart into tiny pieces, but it's not going to eat at you the way the other one does. See if it helps._

And it did rip his heart into tiny pieces, and more than once he has to stop reading for a couple of days, but she's also right (again) - it does help. A lot of the same emotions, but a different kind of end. It'd almost felt cleansing. Which was probably Natasha's idea all along. 

One of the places he'd had to stop and put it down for a bit hadn't been about heartbreak, though - it'd been for a kind of bitter hilarity, a recognition, as one character looked at the dead body of someone who'd badly hurt a woman that character held dear, and thought that now he could tell her that the bastard who hurt her was dead.

Then he thought about how he'd assumed it would mean more. That being able to do that would be more important than it turns out to be. 

Steve'd had to put the book down and go do something with his hands, at that point. The familiarity turned out to be a bit too much. 

He'd told Natasha, once. About the anger, about how it was different and still is, about loathing and the desire to _hurt_ and how he didn't know what to do with it. How some days he wished he could tear Pierce apart with his bare hands and other days he's grateful someone else shot the son of a bitch, and some days, it's both. 

Natasha'd been quiet for a moment, head tilted to one side, and then said, "If it helps, he died alone, defeated, humiliated, and literally surrounded by the flaming wreckage of all his hopes, ambitions and his life's work." 

After a second Steve'd replied, "Actually, that does help." Natasha'd smiled at him. 

And it does. But only so much. 

Learning how to use what he feels, that helps more. 

 

He finds things out piecemeal, mostly. When Bucky can't avoid telling him, and bites out every reluctant word like somehow every single thing they did to him is _his_ sin.

Steve's mostly given up trying to decide what's worse, what was done in the name of "training" and punishment, or what was done out of sheer . . . he's not even sure how to think of it, "maintenance", maybe. They're different, they make him sick and angry in different ways and he lets himself know that, but otherwise he's given up. 

And he's not even sure how to fucking classify some of the stuff Bucky reluctantly tells him now. The stuff that's the _reason_ Bucky knows shit like exactly how much blood he can lose before it'll cost him, can assess concussions by feel, knows almost to the minute how long he can run or fight flat out before his body just literally gives, keels over. 

There's a lot of that Steve doesn't know, about himself. Edges he hasn't found yet. Moments like the one in the elevator, where he does things like look down thirty stories and try to gauge whether he can survive it, and then jump to find out. 

Bucky knows just about every single edge, because HYDRA tested it, tested him, to that edge and almost to destruction, over and over, just so they'd know. 

And lately Bucky's been dreaming about drowning. 

 

When he's feeling the off-kilter, bitter sense of humour, Steve sometimes thinks of Bucky's nightmares in terms of those games kids have, based around decks of cards. Where you buy a starter pack and then you buy new sets or cards to shuffle into your deck and play. The deck just gets bigger. None of them ever seem to get retired, but every so often new ones play through. 

Steve doesn't always wake up before the nightmare wakes Bucky up, not anymore. At least some of them, now, can come and go without Bucky stirring and without upsetting him enough that he has to get up and leave to shake them, so that there's nothing to wake Steve up anyway. Sometimes Steve half-wakes to find Bucky sitting up or leaning back on his hands; asking mostly gets a reply of _nothing, it's fine - dream_ , but it also mostly gets Bucky lying down again and either pulling Steve over to curl around him, or moving over to fit himself against Steve's side and at least giving a shot at going back to sleep. 

So that's fine. 

The drowning dreams are still sharp-edged, though. Mostly end up with Bucky getting up, leaving the bedroom for a while. Tonight, after about ten minutes Steve pushes back the comforter and gets out of bed to follow him. 

Halfway down the hall the kitten scampers in his direction to sniff and then bat at his ankles as he passes. She's getting bigger, looking less fragile - at least a bit. She'll probably always be delicate, though. 

Bucky's in the dining room, sitting at the table and tilting the chair backwards on to two legs, letting it settle down on four, and then tilting back again. Not exactly the best sign, and Steve notices that the right arm of his sleep-shirt is pushed up almost to his elbow. 

"Hey," Steve says, going over and turning a different chair around, so he can rest his arms on the back. Bucky shakes his head slightly as the kitten hops up on the table. 

"Sorry," he says, automatically reaching over to pet her without looking, letting her rub her chin against his hand and push her whole body against his forearm. 

"S'okay," Steve tells him. He thinks about getting up, either to make some coffee or some of the mixed infusion Bruce suggested they try, but something's digging at Bucky's mind, Steve can feel it and he's too drowsy still to figure out exactly why. But it means he stays where he is, and waits. 

The kitten rubs her face against his hand again, and Bucky scritches her chin with his right thumb for a bit before he asks, "Do you remember, with the _Valkyrie_ \- the water, after?" 

Bucky's words come out in little starts, like he's having trouble making the sentences, but Steve shakes his head anyway. 

"I remember the ice rushing up, and that's it," he says. "Dunno if I got knocked out or if some part of my brain just decided . . . " he trails off and shakes his head, "that I didn't need the record, but I don't remember anything else, really, until Fury's fake recovery room." 

Bucky nods. He's looking at the table just to one side of Abrikoska's head. "Good," he says, quiet and clipped, without any inflection. And then, in Russian, "Drowning hurts." 

He looks down after he says it, and then actually looks at the little cat who settled down on the table to be pet. After a second or two Steve reaches over to rest his hand on Bucky's left arm, by the elbow, and then slide down to find his hand. The metal's not quite cool and each seam just barely catches at Steve's skin. 

That's it, for a while, but Steve waits. Takes the anger and turns it around into something that means he _can_ wait. Listen. 

Still in Russian, and still quiet, Bucky says, "Think the first two were just tests. Then they knew I hated it so it was . . . useful. If I wasn't cooperating." He pulls his right hand away from the little cat, lets it rest in his lap. "Before the Chair. I think. Or right after." 

"Nightmares of there?" Steve asks, when Bucky's quiet for longer than a pause. It's more or less the only question he can think of that'll help, the one that'll move this on from the place where Bucky's getting stuck right now. And Bucky shakes his head a bit, like he's dragging himself back from somewhere. 

"No," he says. "Dream makes it anywhere, only thing it keeps is my ankles are caught, I can't do anything about it. About anyone." 

The kitten yawns a yawn that makes it look like the top half of her head's going to come off the bottom half, and then makes a _mrreh_ -noise of complaint. She's a better diversion than Steve is; he gestures to her and says, "I was gonna ask if I should make something to drink, but I think she thinks you should come back to bed." 

It gets a ghost of an stab at a smile, but it also gets Bucky reaching back up with his right hand to scruffle the kitten's fur. That nets some louder complaints and her flopping over onto her side to bat at Bucky's right hand. 

Steve weighs the possibilities and goes for outright asking, "Can I help?" even if he's pretty sure what kind of answer he's going to get. 

And he's right; the attempt at a smile comes back with more substance but less actual humour and Bucky says, "Yeah, sure," in the tone of voice that says the next thing out of his mouth is going to be bleak. "You could cut off my feet so I can't get caught like that. Or you could cut my throat." 

"Nah," Steve says, because he skates over those, now. Doesn't dignify the idea with too much attention. "I'd have a stroke, a seizure and cardiac arrest all at the same time if I tried."

Bucky gives him a sideways look for a minute, and then says, "Yeah, you probably would." 

Steve files that away, with the tone of resignation - it's new, it's not a way Bucky's ever responded to that kind of thing before, which makes it hard to figure what it means. But now's really, really not the time for any kind of digging: it's the middle of the night after a nightmare and they're both too tired. 

"Any reason you _can't_ come back to bed?" Steve asks; eventually Bucky shakes his head and pushes the chair back. Scoops the kitten up and puts her on his shoulder. 

Steve kind of hopes she won't get too big for that. 

 

Steve pauses to get a glass of water, so Bucky's already sitting crosslegged on the bed when he gets there. He's dragging his fingernails click-clicking up and down his left forearm. He's taken to falling back on that to keep from using his left hand to mangle his right; once or twice he's dug hard enough to rip half a fingernail off but it's still better than a broken arm or even the kind of bone-deep bruises he'll leave if he catches himself or Steve catches him short of an actual break.

( _The philosophy's 'harm reduction',_ Sam said, recently, _and I'd actually give a Hell of a lot for certain jackass leaders and people in authority in this country to get their heads out of their asses and get the idea into their thick skulls, because it works a lot better than most of the shit we've got going so far._ And the soul of it's pretty much the same as what Steve's mom used to call "making perfect the enemy of the good". Honestly Steve struggles with it, sometimes, and with figuring out some way of telling of when that so-called "good" stops being good _enough_ , but - well. Nobody ever promised 'easy'.) 

Putting the glass down on the bedside table, Steve has one of those split seconds where his brain puts two thoughts together even if there's not really anywhere to go with them - how water's something you need to live, everyone needs to live, but it's also the problem right now, and it can be poison other times, and how all those kinds of things just exist together. How everything ends up in context. 

He pushes the thought back, because now's not the time. He sits down on the bed across from Bucky. Nudges one of Bucky's ankles with his foot and when Bucky looks up, Steve asks, "What?" quietly. 

Bucky digs at the side of his left thumb with his right thumbnail. "I dunno," he replies. "I guess - figuring out when, the point," and he stops and looks down, and Steve watches his mouth twist crooked like that's how to find solid ground, like turning it acid and sharp makes them something like coherent, "when I gave up, when I stopped even trying and just fucking . . . dropped down and breathed the water in when I could." He flattens his right hand against his left wrist. "Who was watching when I did." Shakes his head a little, again. "I don't even fucking know." 

Steve struggles with finding, with getting a _handle_ on any kind of answer. Any kind of response. Struggles for a while because he's back to just wanting to hit things. This is where something in his head says that there's nothing else to say: all that's left is throwing down your gauntlet or just flat out punching someone in the face. Not exactly what he needs. 

And the kitten climbs over Bucky's leg to bump her head against his wrists, because she doesn't have any respect for - anything, really. Not moments like this, anyway. Probably for the best - and Steve could come up with a lot of philosophic reasons why, if he weren't busy. . .handling the moment, instead. But it's still probably for the best. Helps now, anyway. 

Steve says, slowly, "Getting something over with as fast as you can isn't the same as giving up, Buck." 

He knows what that's going to get. He expects the sound that's like a laugh, except as crooked as Bucky's mouth, and adds, "I'm serious," even and careful. Bucky shakes his head. 

"I know you are," he says. He rests his right fingers on his closed eyes. "I just want it to stop," he admits. Drops his hand back to his lap and looks up for a second. "I just want it to stop and it didn't and it doesn't and every fucking time I think I've got something fucking handled I don't, I'm wrong, or there's something else, because there's _always_ fucking something else - who fucking knows," he goes on, suddenly bitter. "Maybe someday I'll run out and have to fucking start making it up." 

Now he looks away again. 

". . . Bucky," Steve says, and because he can't stifle it all, he pours _enough_ put-upon patience into his voice to make it a joke, "that doesn't even make any fucking sense. I'm lucky if I get stuff out of you with a crowbar and you kick me out to go do other things so you can keep as much miserable as you can to yourself. Don't think I don't know that. That horse shit is _definitely_ not anything you need to throw on the list of shit you get paranoid you're doing. In fact, it'd be nice if you didn't." 

"Language," Bucky pretends to mock, deflecting. He's looking at his hands again, right one resting on the curled up baby cat. 

"My language is completely appropriate to the moment," Steve retorts, and adds, "Bucky. You _know_ that's fucking ridiculous." 

Bucky looks to one side, says, "Yeah. Maybe." 

He sounds tired, he _is_ tired, and for a second Steve hesitates and thinks about letting it go - but there's something in the words and the tone that feels wrong, so he ends up reaching over to touch Bucky's ankle and says, "Hey. What're you worried about?" 

"Nothing," Bucky says, lying and dragging his hand down his face; then, "everything, always, I just - see things more. Remember more pieces. Think I do." 

Steve wonders if it's throwing him, making the lines harder to see again. Says, carefully, "We knew that might happen, though. Doesn't change anything real." 

"Doesn't it," Bucky says, looking close at his closed left hand, voice neutral, not even letting pitch rise at the end. And Steve doesn't know if this is _the_ thing, if there is even _the_ thing that's really the problem, but it's one of them. And it's the one that Steve's stomping on, right here. 

"No," he says. "It doesn't. You're still not gonna find something that's gonna make me hate you, or disgust me, or anything else. You can't. Can't happen." 

And sometimes, times like this, he . . .wants to be specific, almost. Wants to damn well _list_ the things he can pretty well imagine Bucky's mind digging at, constantly. Say, _yes, even if you begged,_ yes _even if you broke or cowered or gave up or grovelled or cried or anything,_ anything _you're fucking thinking, Jesus, Bucky -_ and he doesn't, yet. 

Is pretty sure all Bucky will take out of that is that Steve's _thought_ about all it, and the humiliation of that, and also since Steve's not sure he could do it and stay completely calm, that Steve's pissed off at him, frustrated, upset. That's not going to help right now. 

So he just says, "I'm still me. You're still you. You're still my best friend. We're still home." The idea occurs to him and he adds, "The stupid baby cat still thinks you hung the moon," in case Bucky wants to be done, leave this alone. 

One of the other things he's figuring out is that not everything has to end with a resolution, a change. 

Bucky gives him a dry look and says, "She's never seen the moon, genius," which pretty much says that yeah, he's done now. 

"Okay," Steve grants, "created jingly-balls. Freeze-dried fish. Whatever." And he says, "You should try to sleep." 

Bucky exhales, completely, and pushes his hair behind his ear. "Yeah," he says, and it's giving in. "You're probably right." 

And he does lie down, settles on his right side. Lets Steve curl around him and relaxes a bit when Steve does, the kitten settling beside his head on the pillow. 

They'll come a point where he can say _I've watched every God-damn thing they could have done, up to and including the things you say they didn't, on the inside of my skull, whether I want it or not, and the only thing I ever fucking think besides how much I want everyone there except you dead is how much I wish I could have made it not happen at all._

Maybe by then he won't need to. 

 

In the morning, Steve wakes up before the alarm, and Bucky's still asleep.


End file.
